Hello #OCRCommunity!
After all this time together it seems that I still don’t have the capacity to write a simple Race Recap & that I tend to babble on & on about my experience getting to the race, the participation during it & then the aftermath of the whole experience. I tried, oh lord I tried, but it just seemed so foreign to me. This is why I plan on writing my Race Recaps as more of a Journal Entry than a traditional Race Recap. If that bores you, then go find another author & leave a big thumbs down in the comments section. If you happen to like it, also let me know!
-The Adventure Begins
Let’s start this tale off by pointing out the fact that this race wasn’t in Portland, it was situated about 30mins northeast from the edge of Portland in Washougal, WA at a local Motocross (MX) Park. My wife (Charity), 6-year-old daughter (Sierra), & two friends joined us on our trip to the event. Our friend Erin came along to enjoy the sights & watch over our daughter for us during the events & Troy also came along to participate. If you’ve read any of my previous Race Recaps, you’ll know that Troy is a long time friend and has been getting increasingly addicted to OCRs as he continues to ferry my wife & I to & fro. I really don’t know how he puts up with our crazy!
We left Vancouver Canada at approx. 8 am on Friday, swung by & picked up Erin, & headed south on our adventure to our AirBNB in Vancouver, WA. It’s an odd thing to say that you’re traveling from Vancouver to go to Vancouver & you know the trip according to Google should take approx. 5-6 hours. The first hurdle of our trip was the sheer magnitude of the traffic. I figured leaving early on a Friday morning & getting near Seattle just after the morning traffic would be the way to go. Well, I was wrong! Traffic was at a crawl the whole way through Seattle, Tacoma, & Olympia. The trip ended up taking us close to 11 hours in total due to mainly traffic, lunch, & rest stops & the fact that a 6-year-old has the bladder the size of a pea! We finally arrived tired and in one piece at our Vancouver, WA based AirBNB.
-The Sprint Awaits
We left the AirBNB around 8 am knowing full well that it would take longer than the anticipated 30mins by Google to get to the site. We also knew we wanted to start earlier so we could finish and have plenty of time to say hello to people, go back to our room, perhaps clean up some, change if needed & then head back for the event that evening. Parking was in a field of rolling hills & was well marked and flagged by volunteers. We were pretty early & the absolute sea of vehicles that were already parked had me pretty giddy at the sheer turn out. I believe someone mentioned that the site sold out, well, if it didn’t, you would have fooled me, there were a LOT of participants at this one! We didn’t get to the actual starting line until 10:45, 15 mins after our posted starting heat time. Lesson learned, show up even earlier! You think after 4 years of doing these that I would have learned by now! We got on-site, parked & slowly made our way through registration. We found the ‘Beasts OCR’ tent which wasn’t hard as they were awarded the largest team tent and introduced ourselves as part of the Vancity OCR team which merges with Beasts when we run in the USA, the Beasts will often do the same with Vancity when they come to play in Canada.
-Let’s get Dirty
The event map showed 21 obstacles, approx. 7 km of distance and a pretty flat terrain compared to those from previous race experience at other venues.
Charity’s start time was for 11:15 and the starting corral was pretty full but she was allowed to start early with us as there was still a small amount of room for those that wanted to join in on our heat. After the initial short climb, as I mentioned before, the course was pretty flat. The initial hill I would say was the steepest & wasn’t really all that long. There were a few other hills strewn about here & there but maybe I’m just finally getting used to and acclimated to this stuff as I felt it was a pretty easy going course.
See the Course map for a full list of obstacles, I only failed the Multi Rig & the Monkey bars so I know I’m getting stronger & finally starting to use proper form. I ran into no issues at the first few obstacles & then came up to my old nemesis, the Rope Climb. I’ve only ever done it 1.5 times in the past but it was still pretty early in the race & I felt pretty good. I made it up & back down with no issues other than getting a good rope burn on my ankle, reminder to self, wear high socks to Spartan Races. My wife finally got to see me complete the rope climb, that was a good feeling to show her how well I am progressing. I guess that’s one more obstacle that I can hopefully continue to train for and conquer on an ongoing basis! The dunk wall had about 4 inches of air between the bottom of the wall & the mud.
The barbed wire crawl seemed abnormally long, not as long as Vegas mind you. I didn’t want to exaggerate the distance so I fired up Google Earth & did the best that I could to determine the actual length. It looks like the barbed wire crawl was in the section of the course that has the Whoops/Moguls in it and is approx. 250 feet long. It was tough with all the little bumps to get through it, maybe they just made it feel worse than it was? We’ll come back to the wonderful barbed wire crawl later! The Plate drag was dusty as heck & most of the lines had some pretty good bumps in them that made me walk to the plate, lift it up a bit, go back & continue to pull it, there was also a volunteer stating there were bees in the area & to beware.
We actually saw “Warning: Bees” signs strewn all about the property. The Cliff Bucket Brigade was next, and I feel very odd about this one. Am I crazy for saying it was just way too short & too easy? I honestly felt like I needed to do it a second time to get the normal experience! I didn’t do it a second-time mind you! I just shook my fist in the air and vocally cursed Spartan for going easy on me. I got a few chuckles & groans back from others & continued on…
I ended up bumping into Amelia Boone at the 7’ Wall. She had already done the course earlier that day & came in 2nd place for the Elite Women. She was now doing the course again with her dad and he was wearing a shirt that said ”Amelia will do my burpees”, man.. I should get a shirt that says that!
The Rings & Monkey bars were the last two obstacles to fail (although I’ve done the rings that ONE time!) & then the finish line. It was at the top of what I would figure was a tabletop jump, and well, there was no fire or photographer there which was a bit sad. I understand no fire due to fire bans and all and at least Spartan made up for the no finish line photographer by placing a bunch of wall backdrops & props with photographers right after the finish line. All in all, it was a pleasantly cool day, with one small shower in the middle & another larger shower at the end, but it was perfect for cooling you down. The course wasn’t overly hard or muddy.
-Halftime wrap up
I would say the layout of the festival area was nice. There was plenty of room & porta pottys throughout the area & along the course. American Spartan races seem to have the best vendor and sponsor areas. I’m not sure why, I found this when I was working Event Sales for Spartan Race Canada. Keep up the great work guys! The course was a perfect one for someone new to Spartan. I’m starting to feel Spartan is changing up their dynamic for the Sprint & making it a gateway into Spartan. The Super is tougher & well, the Beast even more so! I’m reading more and more people posting the same revelations. Do the Sprint if you’re just starting out, do the Super if you’ve been doing this a while, and if you want to see what you’re made of, do the Beast. Heck, you did the Beast & you wanna take it up one more notch!? Do the Ultra! This Portland Sprint ended up being about 6.69Km (4.15Mi)
All above photo credits go to Spartan Race
-The Portland 4Hr Hurricane Heat #146 (My first!)
My apologies for the quality of these following photos, they were are all screen captured from and are credited to Spartan Race/Dingo Dominguez’s Facebook Live Videos
Once we were done the sprint we headed back to the AirBNB, dropped off Erin & Sierra, quickly showered, changed, grabbed some grub & headed right back to the site. Yes, we were just there earlier that day but probably due to the fact there wasn’t a slowly moving train of vehicles headed back to the site & the fact that we were now allowed to enter from a different direction we somehow took a wrong turn. We were supposed to be on-site for 4pm as the HH started @ 5pm. We ended up getting to the meeting spot around closer to 4:30 due to our directional mixup.
I’m going to back peddle a bit here, Troy was freaking out about the HH. He felt he wasn’t quite ready & where he needed to be physically or mentally but knew deep down inside that he would be able to get it done. It sure didn’t help things that I wasn’t able to give him any help with preparing for the event as there is very little to no information about these HH’s. I tried to not give him the disparaging information that I had been able to glean from the internet. That of the fact that the HH’s can go anywhere from 4-6 hours, and are varying distances etc.. I tried to not play on that but I didn’t want to try to pass it off as a cake walk either. We had all our gear & our special item was to bring two bricks, the kind you build a house with. We ended up carrying those bricks throughout the day. Doing Burpees with them, hand claps, more burpees, more hand claps, carrying them through the dunk wall. You get my drift, they went with us, in our hands, everywhere.
Krypteia Dingo oversaw our little group of if I recall 59? Sorry, I have THE worst memory! Along side of ‘Beast OCR’ President Adam Birgenheier. Again, memory fails me, but I believe that original # was supposed to be closer to 90? Going by a fellow team mates GPS as I totally forgot to even start mine due to my brain going in overload from the days events, we ended up going for approx. 4h 13m & with a total distance of 4.2Km (2.65Mi). The HH isn’t about how far you go, sure, it’s an endurance event, but that doesn’t always mean distance. We started our night off owing Dingo 300 burpees in which we did like 50 of them facing down hill right at the start. Two members dropped out during this initial barrage and a few others went up to Krypteia Dingo, had a quick chat session with him and then got back in line. I wish I was a bit better at this & that my memory wasn’t so bad as I know I’m not doing the HH any justice. It wasn’t an easy feat at all. Doing those burpee’s SUCKED! But, I dug deep & got um done! Maybe slower than some, but I still managed to get um done & not slow down the group. After a bit more of this and that with the bricks, we ended up getting put into 4 groups of 14, I believe another dropped out just before we grouped up so we ended up having even groups. I was picked to be the initial leader of Team #4.
We jogged to what was the 6’ walls. I believe we were supposed to make use of them, but they had already been taken down. Adam openly asked what we should do instead, the Cargo Net was directly beside us so I stated we should do the cargo net instead. Evidently, that was a good idea because that’s where we ended up going. We had to get our team & our bricks over to the other side, only caveat was that we could only have one man at the top.
As this was our first group session doing something like this we awkwardly made our way through it. We ended up having a few people hold some of the bricks, sending those people over, fireman lining their bricks up & over the cargo net then repeated it. I believe we came in second for that task. All of us were awarded Burpee’s or Hand Claps (basically jumping jacks without the leg movement, of course with our bricks still in hand, or some sort of torture as our reward.
After that we made our way over to the Kids Rolling Mud section. We were asked as a team to make our way through it with a brick in each hand & to keep the bricks out of the water & mud. This one wasn’t so bad as the kids ditches & hills weren’t so that deep or that high. We made it through that section pretty unscathed.
That had to have been practice as we then worked our way over to the Adult Rolling Mud & Dunk Wall. Our instructions were to get through the same as before. Getting no mud or water on our bricks. A few of us bailed pretty hard through this section and one of the other teams lost a brick in the water. Once the rest of the teams were done, Krypteia Dingo recruited the rest of their team to get back in the water and help. As it was taking them a bit longer than Dingo anticipated, he ordered them into quadrants & had them sweep their area. That found it in under 20seconds again showing the versatility of working as a team. From there we were brought to the Slip Wall. Oh, don’t forget all this time we were doing our rewards & trying to pay back the 250burpees that we owed Dingo. The task was pretty much the same, get our guys & their bricks to the other side. This time we decided to just get enough over to make a firemans line, get the bricks over & then storm the wall as we had 3-4 ropes per team to make use of. We flew through that task with ease & took first place buy a large margin. Our reward, 50 clap ups. Thank you Krypteia Dingo!
It seemed evident that he was teaching us that coming in first wasn’t always the best tactic. I know at this point we all started to ask each other if we should sandbag ourselves to not come in first. But, in the end, we knew that just wasn’t the absolute lesson we should take away from it.
We then Bear Crawled up hill from the Slip Wall to the Herc Hoist. Again I did my best on Google Earth, it looks to have been about 350ft or so. Once there, we made a wall with our bricks so we could use our hands & we all did the Herc Hoist one at a time as a team to completion. I didn’t have an issue with it earlier that day, but the bags were heavy. I was the first to tackle it & was fearful that I’d slow us all down, but I finished second & then moved on to the back of the line to allow the next person to continue on. I don’t recall who won, because by this time it wasn’t about who won, it was how well did they accomplish the goal. 1st or last. In the end, I want to say that’s what Dingo was trying to get through to us the whole time.
-Gettin’ er done!
Lastly was the Barbed wire crawl/dead body drag. We all made team walls with our bricks, Dingo picked out a few dead bodies from each team we were told to break up into groups of three all with one dead body each. We then had to drag that dead body across those moguls & under the barbed wire. Ta boot, we were told we had to stay below the line of the barbed wire at all times as it was actually “Grazing machine gun fire” I ended up dragging the first dead body through the moguls with my partner, luckily Adam brandished himself a firehose & started to hose us all down. Yes, I said luckily. Sure, it was a bit cold & rather annoying, but it helped lube up our path. This is when Adam gained the nickname of “Hoser” which I will henceforth be calling him. You’re welcome Adam! It was a struggle getting our dead body through, but we made it! We were about a quarter of the way through & then we were told we would all have to be the dead body. Oi! I really didn’t wanna get dragged through that as it looked like it was worse than doing the actual dragging. At this point the daylight was starting to dwindle so we were asked to snap on our Chem Lights. The second go round had me dragging the other team mate through the gauntlet, I questioned his decision, not because I wanted to be lazy & get dragged, again, as it looked worse, but because he was visibly shaking & cold. He also mentioned he may be close to hypothermia. I offered up some advice that he may be batter to do the dragging as it may keep him more active & therefore warmer. He opted to be dragged. Again we slogged through it, with the task absolutely sucking the whole way, halfway through we were told this would be the last team to go & were asked to turn on our headlamps. We got to the end battered, scraped & a bit bloody from rocks & barbed wire but we made it through. I was so happy I didn’t end up getting dragged through it too.
-Wrapping up the whole day, finally!
From there we were told we were going to the extraction point. I think we were let lose still owing Krypteia Dingo around 200 burpees. Well Krypteia, I want you to know that during the time that it took to write this I banged out 75 of them & I plan on doing the rest over the course of the day. I got my Dog Tags & Shirt & proceeded to get stung multiple times while trying to change back at our car. I can tell that I am getting stronger & that my body is getting more used to doing these types of activities because I was able to make it through this experience pretty unscathed & not too sore. I’ve been getting fewer bruises as medals & the DOMS the days after aren’t so bad. But… Let me tell ya, that wasn’t the case this time! Maybe it was the 6+ hours of physical activity on Saturday, or the 11+ hour drive back sitting crammed in the car with 4 others or it IS the DOMS, but I was rather sore & stiff this go round. So much so that I booked myself in for a massage on Tuesday. Best decision of my life right there! Today it feels like I normally do after an event like this. Hello muscles, yes, thank you for getting me through that now rest up before tonight’s’ Bootcamp Class. *Passes Out*
The Spartan Warrior Ethos (Memorize the bold lines, there will be a test!)
I will always place the mission first.
Every participant soon learns that their own personal needs and goals must be sacrificed in order to succeed. Though many teams fight with each other early on, once egos are set aside success is achieved.
I will never accept defeat.
Defeat is something that occurs in the mind, not on the field. It is not an impossible task or an opponent that will defeat you but rather giving up in your own mind. Personal courage and perseverance will see you through.
I will never quit.
If you do not accept defeat, you must still have the fortitude and strength to go on. Not quitting is more than just refusing to stop, it is the will to continue.
I will never leave a fallen comrade.
Really, this is what the Hurricane Heat is all about. The strength of the team is worth more than the sum of its members. Each task presented in the Hurricane Heat cannot be accomplished alone, and no team can move on without all its members. Someone will always be slower, someone will always be hurt, but it is not their weakness that causes failure, but the strength of their team that assures success.
Ryan Fick
Ryan has a beautiful Mudd Queen as a wife & 3 gorgeous daughters Brandi (20), Samantha (18) & Sierra (5) that keep him busy.
Drop him a line if you have any questions or just want to say Hi.=)
Latest posts by Ryan Fick (see all)
- Tough Mudder Whistler Weekend {Journal Entry} - August 31, 2018
- Spartan Portland/Washougal WA Sprint and Hurricane Heat {Journal Entry} - August 24, 2018
- Spartan Seattle Super 2018 – Muddageddon the Sequel - April 27, 2018
